Media Depictions of Brides, Wives, and Mothers, edited by Alena Amato Ruggerio, explores how television, film, the internet, and other media variously perpetuate gender stereotypes. The contributors to this volume bring a variety of feminist rhetorical and media criticism approaches from across the communication discipline to their analyses of how television, film, news coverage, and the Internet shape our expectations of the performance of women’s identities. This collection includes studies of Bridezillas, Jon & Kate Plus 8, Sex and the City, Sarah Palin, Nancy Pelosi, The Devil Wears Prada, Practical Magic, “momtini” blogs, and Mad Men fan websites. Readers will learn to apply the insights from each chapter to their own sets of myths, stereotypes, and assumptions about gendered roles, and to recognize the possibilities for both liberation and domination when women’s practices of marrying, mating, and mothering are represented and misrepresented in the media. This collection is an essential contribution to media studies and criticism of gender stereotypes in contemporary culture. Read the author's recent interview with Literary Ashland. You can also visit the author's website here. “Alena Amato Ruggerio's anthology offers a stimulating collection of chapters by scholars who discuss the impact of myths and stereotypes in media portrayals of brides, wives, and mothers. What's most intriguing and hopeful is its media literacy approach, which neither wholly blames nor wholly forgives but rather advocates the empowerment of media consumers through critical thinking and social activism that can replace inappropriate and damaging images and perceptions with 'equality and justice.' This collection's excellent chapters provide road maps for this worthy outcome.” ―Mary-Lou Galician, Arizona State University “Although the editor's aim is to offer current research on how media perpetuate gender stereotypes, one might wonder―given today's plethora of depictions of women throughout television, cable, film―if this is a cutting-edge endeavor. But the scholarship is impressive, and the 17 chapters do sweep anew over Kate Gosselin, Desperate Housewives, Sarah Palin's grizzly bear mamas, Mad Men women, et al. In the mix, a few less-explored issues appear, for example, depictions of women in the military and Deepa Mehta's important film Water (2005), to which Lauren DeCarvalho applies Martha Nussbaum's capabilites approach. The book will introduce less experienced readers to a broad scope of women scholars and impressive analyses and documentation. Summing Up: Recommended.” ― Choice Reviews Hinda Mandell is a professor in the School of Communication at RIT in New York, where she was the director of the university's journalism program from 2020-2024. Mandell is editor of this volume, Global Craftivism since the Pussyhats: Handcraft Responses to Violence, War, Illness and Isolation ; editor Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); co-curator and co-editor of Crafting Democracy: Fiber Arts and Activism (RIT Press, 2019); a co-editor of Nasty Women and Bad Hombres: Gender and Race in the 2016 US Presidential Election (University of Rochester Press, 2018); the author of Sex Scandals, Gender and Power in Contemporary American Politics (Praeger, 2017); and co-editor of Scandal in a Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). As a journalist, her work has been published in Politico , The Boston Globe , The Chicago Tribune , The LA Times , among other publications. An avid DIY'er who loves to unleash creativity in others, Mandell is the founder of her university's annual Zine Fest. Her scholarly inquiries into collaborative handcraft as change-agents have been published in Craft Research , the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies , and forthcoming in the Journal of Feminist Scholarship . She is on the international advisory board of the Journal of Craft & Communities and on the editorial board the International Journal of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles , and her research has been funded by the Center for Craft and Fiber Art Now. In 2020 she was a guest artist with Visual Studies Workshop, whose residency funded the production of her artist book, “The Yarn Must Live: A Polemic on a Pandemic and Public Art,” which was acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 2021. Since 2017, she has organized maker interventions on issues of social reform tied to geographic place reaching 2,000 craft participants. She is also under contract for an upcoming book with Rowman & Littlefield, Crafting Choice: Abortion Politics and Handwork in the U.S. She's been interviewed by The New York Times and The Associated Press , among other global outlets, on the importance of making objects by hand. She is on Instagram: @crochetactivism.